The Museum of Modern Art September 11-16, 2026
| The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York is proud to support The Museum of Modern Art’s first complete North American retrospective dedicated to acclaimed Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică, one of contemporary cinema’s most distinctive and influential film essayists. Spanning more than three decades of filmmaking, the retrospective offers New York audiences a rare opportunity to encounter the full scope of Ujică’s cinema and his singular exploration of history, memory, politics, and the power of images. Andrei Ujică will be present at MoMA to introduce several screenings and engage with audiences throughout the retrospective. From the collapse of communist regimes and the Soviet Union to the cultural mythology of the Beatles, football, cinema, and personal memory, Ujică has consistently investigated the ways images shape our understanding of history—and of ourselves. At a moment when artificial intelligence and rapidly evolving media are transforming how images are produced, circulated, and trusted, his work feels more urgent than ever. At the heart of the retrospective is Ujică’s celebrated trilogy on the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union: “Videograms of a Revolution” (1992), made with Harun Farocki and centered on the Romanian Revolution of December 1989; “Out of the Present” (1995), which observes the disappearance of the Soviet Union from the extraordinary perspective of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev aboard the Mir space station; and “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu” (2010), Ujică’s monumental portrait of the Romanian dictator constructed almost entirely from 24 years of official state images. The program also features Ujică’s most recent feature, “TWST/Things We Said Today” (2024), created in collaboration with writer Geoffrey O’Brien. Returning to New York in August 1965 and the Beatles’ legendary appearance at Shea Stadium, the film approaches a watershed moment in popular culture through archival imagination and personal memory. For the teenage Ujică, then living in a Romanian village near the Yugoslav border, the Beatles offered a glimpse of another world beyond the Iron Curtain—and an early revelation of art’s ability to cross political and geographical boundaries. Among the retrospective’s special highlights is a work-in-progress excerpt from Ujică’s latest film, “Matches and Days,” a meditation on the ways World Cup football has marked the rhythms of his own life and those of his son and grandchildren. The retrospective also includes “2 Pasolini” (2000) and “Unknown Quantity” (2005), further revealing a filmmaker for whom cinema is not simply a means of representing history, but a way of questioning how history itself is constructed—and how images become memory. ANDREI UJICĂ AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ARTVenue: The Museum of Modern Art, New York Presented by: The Museum of Modern Art Organized by: Joshua Siegel, Curator, and Olivia Priedite, Program Coordinator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art With support from: Romanian Cultural Institute For the complete screening schedule, film details, and ticket information, please visit MoMA. |
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